Prosopagnosia
by chi-chi-chimera
Summary: Regeneration is always a rough ride, but this is more of one than usual.


_Prosopagnosia_

Rewound. The skein of their self a fabric split and carded, and hurtling at a speed which leaves them returned to the point of their weaving and at the same time moving nowhere at all. In three dimensions, those that lie closest to the surface, they do not move, but in the other ten xe, a creature of thirteens, is unmade and remade and thirteen anew. Some thousands of years stretched out and written in their person which moves where xe likes and measures themselves apart from those eight vectors around them, now mirrored in the potentiality that lies ahead.

Rough though. Rougher than remakings that have come before, for those were but the part of the thirteen and now this is thirteen doubled, unnatural gift that it is. Xe is a pattern now that repeats. In the violence, xe gives little thought to the meat-puppet that xe wears in up-down, left-right, forward-back, going through its own remaking, construction of flesh and bone and flatness. An extruded part of self in the shallow places, lurking with shallow things with small and shallow minds making vibrations through shallows in feeble communication. But. Xe is fond of them. They are uncomplicated.

(And yet, even being returned to the weaving, to the Loom, is only one beginning and in the dark and far off and in the curls of the deepest places xe is something else also. Something that has always been, and gave itself up to the memory of the Looms of Lungbarrow to be woven again in a past that is locked behind gossamer adamantine walls, the Other that became theirself that is the Doctor.)

Now, after an eternity and an instant, the parts become the whole become the new self, the new configuration. Off-balance with suddenness. Tentacular fractals in the greater self bloom with sudden chromatophoric colour and xe finds themselves irritated by it. Says so. Symbiont-She within whose vastness his own is nestled translates the words of his thoughts into the movements of the air that they expect his meat-body to make.

"Kidneys! I have new kidneys! I don't like the colour!"

"Of your kidneys?" Clara-Companion asks. Xe squints at her, ill-processing the input of mere three dimensions through this extrusion of their form. Angry. Xe is angry. That sounds about right.

No time to make an answer though, for the TARDIS is encountering problems of her own. Disturbances and eddies in the space outside of space caused by their regeneration, not-winds that buffet, not-waves that crash. Spiralling, they move and materialise within. Xe feels dimensionality wrap around them.

Emerging from the time-seas, washed up against the shore, xe stumbles out onto solid ground under sky, still trying to control the function of limbs all wet and new and unfamiliar. Mind stretching out. Filtering vision. Colours. There are... colours.

Above, it is what is called blue in the human visual spectrum. A part of themselves feels it should be something else. Something... warmer. There are tall things which are brown and also green. There is a thing that moves. A thing much bigger than they are and xe stretches out and... oh. She has the most wonderful mind.

She is predator-self, she is devourer, she is sharp instinct and life-bearer, egg-hatcher, she who has nudged young into the world as slimy and unsteady as xe is right now and fed them meat warm and half-digested to make them strong. She is uncertain at their self which touches hers, but xe turns up their face to hers and spreads all their many arms – only two of which she can see – and laughs.

Behind, Clara-Companion grabs the shoulder of xir meat-form and tugs them back into the welcoming embrace of xir symbiot, slamming shut winged extrusions – no, _doors_ – and looking at them with frustration pouring out.

"That was a Tyrannosaurus rex," she says. "A _T-rex. _And you looked like you wanted to hug it."

"No I didn't," xe replies, confused. "Hugging? What's that? Sounds unpleasant."

"I want..." Hesitation. Clara's mind feels almost as confused as theirs, but not quite in the same way. "I want to go _home._"

Around them, the TARDIS shudders, displeased. She transmits the sense of outside pressure, of wetness, and the desire not to be here any longer.

"Yes," xe says. "Home. I can do that."

Xe slides into interface with Her console, and offers up the sense of a destination, and She accepts it. Time-rotors engage, and She calls out Her familiar hum as She moves slipping along the rugged terrain of the fourth dimension, arcing elegant as the curve of a parabola before dipping back into one and two and three. But the pressure-sense, the wet-sense, that is still here.

But. Not for long. Then it is gone; the TARDIS relaxes with a sigh, and sends Her signal that it is safe to emerge.

"I liked her though," xe tells Clara. "Her, that big lady."

"The _dinosaur? _She was going to _eat_ you!"

"What, really?" It doesn't seem likely; xe didn't pick up anything like that from her mind. "No, no, no, she was going to feed me, because I'm like an egg you see, an egg that's hatched."

"You're... not making any sense."

"_You're _not making any sense." Xe looks at her again. Mostly brown bits, with some pink bits. The sort of oval things near the top are eyes, he remembers that, unless they're mouths. But humans only have one mouth, so that's the bit with the red circumference a little lower down.

Someone knocks on the TARDIS's exterior. Xe cocks their head. Moves to look out. Another pink thing, but why does the word potato spring to mind? It is wearing a drape of dark cloth. "Shush," xe tells it, and closes the door again.

Although. Perhaps more explanation is needed. Xe looks outside for the second time. "I was being chased by a giant dinosaur, but I think I've given it the slip," xe explains, working somewhat from Clara-Companion's version of events. Well; she tends to know what she's talking about as much as a human can, xe remembers that much.

Xe makes to return inside, but a thought occurs. The creature does strike some chord of memory, jumbled as it is with reweaving. Xe emerges fully, studying it closely, plucking at the meat-thing with other limbs in realms it cannot perceive. It reaches less elevation than xir own extrusion in these dimensions. Xe spits out names, words that scrape some meaning disconnected from the depths of their mind. Xe is not yet adapted. Xe is pieces, shards, the loose pattern of the cloth. But there are other sentients here the shape of whose thoughts at least xe recognises, if not for now the fleshy things within which those selves are contained.

"The green one!" xe greets them. "And... the not-green one." Xe is feeling... insubstantial. In thirteen dimensions the remnants of the inchoate energy of creation crackles along the strings and threads and particles which are xir greater body. Xe must release it, fathomless, arcing, back into ether and dark between stars but... there is xir companion emerging from the TARDIS. And though the name sprung easily enough through Symbiot-She into physicality before, now it stops half-hearted and lost in the space between them.

There is. Confusion. Waves. In thoughts. Input unprocessed. Sensations.

Darkness.

Xe shuts down their consciousness and falls into blessed relief.

In the shallows the human veil has stolen a face older than the last. The First face was old too, but that was the age of Gallifrey unchanging and ancient, and that life is no more nor ever was in this history as xe has written it. Xe takes stock of their form as it has come to be.


End file.
